text: What Needham calls the "golden age of Chinese alchemy" (c. 400-800) was from the end of the Jin to the late Tang dynasty.
  The Daoist scholar and alchemist Tao Hongjing (456–536) was a founder of the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) and the compiler-editor of the basic "Shangqing revelations" purportedly dictated to Yang Xi by Daoist deities between 364 and 370. Many of these revealed texts described immortality elixirs, and Tao incorporated the core  (Great Clarity) alchemical texts into the Shangqing corpus, marking the first encounter between  and an established Daoist movement. Although the Shangqing texts used the  process mainly as a support for meditation and visualization practices, the language, techniques, and rituals in these works are mostly identical with those of the Taiqing corpus. Tao was commissioned by Emperor Wu of Liang to experiment with  alchemy and produce elixirs, but only achieved limited success.
  The decline of the original Taiqing tradition resulted in a tendency to focus the alchemical process on two major methods: refining cinnabar into mercury and compounding lead with mercury. Advocates of the cinnabar-mercury  methods, such as the 8th-century alchemist Chen Shaowei , described producing quicksilver in cosmological terms, without any reference to the  system. During the Tang dynasty, the lead-mercury tradition based on the  acquired importance, and  alchemy was transformed from an instrument for communicating with supernatural beings to a support for intellectualizing  philosophical principles. Several works related to the  rejected cinnabar-mercury methods with the rationale that yang cinnabar and yin mercury alone cannot produce the true elixir. Historically, the lead-mercury theory became the predominant method.
  The Tang period is also known for intensified imperial patronage of , even though elixir poisoning caused the death of Emperors Wuzong (r. 840-846), Xuanzong (r. 846-859), and likely also Xianzong (r. 805-820) and Muzong (r. 829-824). While elixir poisoning is sometimes designated as a reason for the decline of  after the Tang, the shift to  was the result of a much longer and more complex process.  and early  developed together throughout the Tang and were closely interrelated.